😲Amazon’s New Robot Can Feel

Today we will discuss:

• Vulcan, Amazon’s robot with a sense of touch—Trained to sense contact and self-improve, the new robot has already handled 500,000 packages

• Don’t miss this week’s Workflow Wednesday—AI-powered customer experience with ProWritingAid, Dify, and OpenAI + Make + GitHub for better engagement; now available at only $20/month! 

• Apple’s AI search plans—Apple is exploring alternatives to Google in response to changing search dynamics

• In other AI news today—Figma launches AI tools for building sites and marketing assets, Study finds short chatbot answers increase hallucinations, OpenAI and the FDA reportedly discuss AI for drug evaluations, and Anthropic rolls out a Claude-powered web search API

• Saved the best for last—9 must-try AI tools

Amazon’s new warehouse robot can feel what it’s picking up

Key Points 

• Vulcan is a two-armed robot trained on physical data to handle 75% of Amazon’s product catalog.

• It uses force sensors to “feel” items and has already processed over 500,000 orders in two warehouses.

♨️News - Amazon just unveiled Vulcan, a two-armed warehouse robot that can actually feel the items it handles. 

One arm moves items around inside storage compartments, while the other uses a suction cup and camera to pick them up. Thanks to built-in force sensors, Vulcan can sense when it touches something and adjust its grip, kind of like a human hand.

👾How smart is this thing? Pretty smart. Vulcan was trained using physical data like touch and pressure, and it already knows how to handle about 75% of Amazon’s entire product catalog. Even better, it can improve over time. Right now, it’s hard at work in warehouses in Spokane, Washington and Hamburg, Germany, and it’s already helped process over half a million orders.

👷‍♂️Should workers be worried? Not according to Amazon. The company has a massive robot fleet already, and some people think robots like Vulcan are being brought in to replace humans. But Amazon insists that’s not the goal. They say robots are there to make warehouses safer and more efficient, not to take jobs.

Read the full story here. 

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Apple considers replacing Google with AI search in Safari

Key Points 

• Apple is considering AI-driven search options for Safari, potentially ending its $20 billion deal with Google.

• Eddy Cue revealed AI search providers like OpenAI and Perplexity could replace Google, though not immediately.

☕News - Apple is exploring a major shift in how users search on its devices, with a focus on integrating AI-powered search engines into Safari. 

This change is driven by the growing possibility of ending the long-standing $20 billion-per-year deal that currently makes Google the default search provider on Apple devices.

👨‍💻What to expect - Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, discussed the company’s plans during his testimony in the US Justice Department’s case against Google. 

With search volumes on Safari dipping for the first time, Cue pointed to AI search providers like OpenAI, Perplexity AI, and Anthropic as future competitors to traditional search engines like Google. While Apple won’t immediately replace Google with AI search, it plans to offer users these new options in the future.

Cue emphasized that while AI search tools aren’t yet up to par with Google’s offerings, their potential is undeniable. Apple is already incorporating AI into its products, with ChatGPT integrated into Siri and plans to introduce Google’s Gemini AI search soon. Cue noted that other AI players, including Perplexity and xAI, are being considered as well.

🥸Why this matters - For Apple, this move marks a significant shift in how its 2 billion active devices may operate in the years to come. While Cue admitted that the potential loss of revenue from Google’s deal is concerning, he remains optimistic about the future of AI-driven search engines.

Read the full story here.